Greens see responsibility for government formation chaos with Kretschmer

The Greens believe that Minister President Michael Kretschmer (CDU) is responsible for the chaos surrounding the formation of the government in Saxony. He had recklessly abandoned the democratic center in this country and very naively fled into the arms of the Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) alliance, said state chairwoman Marie Müser before the Green party conference in Dresden.

The consultation procedure that the CDU and SPD announced last week as a mechanism for a joint minority government came as a great surprise to the Greens. Müser described it as a "door opener in the direction of the AfD". However, she believes that cooperation with the party, which has been classified by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution as a right-wing extremist movement, must be ruled out. The ball is currently in Kretschmer's court and he has not yet made any offers of talks to the Greens.

Party conference in Chemnitz

The Greens' state party conference in Chemnitz on Saturday will focus on evaluating the state election campaign, but due to the current situation, topics such as support for Ukraine and the exclusion of cooperation with the AfD will also play a role. At two further party conferences in December, a new state executive committee will be elected and the state list for the federal election will be drawn up.

Since the break-up of the traffic light coalition in the federal government on November 6 and the federal party conference at which Robert Habeck was elected as the candidate for chancellor, 160 membership applications have been received in Saxony, said co-chair Christin Furtenbacher. "There has been a real spirit of optimism."

The Greens want to carry this momentum into the upcoming federal election campaign. According to Müser, the aim is to achieve a significantly stronger result than in the state elections in September, in which the Greens slipped to 5.1% - 3.8 percentage points less than in 2019.